HP's latest generation Touchstone technology allows you to tap two devices together to share information.

HP has big plans for the smartphone market

If you
were worried that the rather anemic
release (features-wise) of the Palm Pre 2 might be a sign that Hewlett
Packard was giving up on the smartphone market, the company today had a
trifecta of product announcements that should put those fears to rest.

I. The Event

At a San Francisco warehouse the company held a special event at 1 p.m. today
entitled "Think
Beyond". There the company showed off its hopes and dreams for
mobile products powered by the company's new webOS 2.0 "Mansion".

HP's Tom Bradley brags, "We have a history of firsts. We have a tradition
of creating firsts."

Describes Mr. Bradley, "I think the most conservative estimates for the
connected device market is low. We're in the early stages of a market that's
going to continue to grow in size, importance, and relevance for years to come.
What we've focused on is how we bring the scale. Since acquiring Palm, we've
added hundreds of engineers. Adding to an already amazing team, led by Jon
Rubinstein."

II. The Devices

i. Smartphones

The first fruit of Palm's recent labors announced at the event was the tiny HP
Veer smartphone. It packs 8 GB of storage, 512 MB of DRAM, HSPA+,
802.11b/g, and Bluetooth into a credit card-sized footprint. It also
packs a second generation Qualcomm Snapdragon, the 800 MHz MSM7230 to be
precise. Like most smartphones it comes equipped with light sensors,
proximity sensors, and accelerometers for responsive animation and touch.
It also can create a mobile hotspot to share the internet connection with
other devices.

Mr. Rubinstein brags, "Never before has a smartphone done so much, and
felt so little."

Next up is the Pre3, which Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein describes as a
"smartphone for professionals". The newest version of the Pre
line comes with a more up-to-speed 3.6-inch 800 x 480 WVGA LCD touchscreen
display, a 5 MP rear camera w/ flash, a VGA front-facing camera, and a large
slide-out QWERTY keyboard which Mr. Rubinstein claims is the largest in an
available smartphone bottom-out slider today.

Rounding out the hardware is a beastly 1.4 GHz Snapdragon 8x55. It's
unclear whether this is a dual-core or single core chip (both designs have been
announced), but from the series (8000), it's clearly based on the Scorpion core
design and is built at 45 nm. The RAM stays at 512 MB.

The Pre3 comes in two different varieties that support Bluetooth
2.1+EDR, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and either HSPA+ or EVDO Rev. A. The phone
is available with either 8 or 16 GB of NAND Flash storage.

The Pre3 won't be available till the summer, but the HP Veer
will launch in the "spring" timeframe.

Next up HP unveiled the latest version of the Touchstone charge, which requires
no cords to charge up the smart phones. Both the Veer and the Pre3 are
compatible. The phones now launch into configurable demo modes while
charging, to show off photos, appointments, etc.

ii. Tablets

Palm's next big item was the TouchPad, the company's long-awaited direct
answer to the iPad. Rumored for over a year, the webOS tablet is
finally here (and even leaked online earlier today).

The TouchPad could well be the iPad-killer that many were hoping one of the
Android makers would deliver.

To start, it is a full 9.7-inches (same as the iPad) and features an iPad-like
1024x768 pixel display. At 13.7 mm it's ever-so-slightly thicker than the
13 mm thick iPad. And it weighs 1.6 lb, identical to the weight of the
3G-version iPad.

The rest of the hardware also beats the first-generation iPad handily.
Onboard is a dual-core 1.2 GHz dual-core Scorpion Snapdragon SoC.
The likely model number is the MSM8660. An Adreno 220 GPU is
onboard the chip for snappy graphics. It has a full 1 GB of DRAM, up from
the iPad's meager 256 MB. It packs either 16 or 32 GB of onboard Flash
storage.

On the software side Palm showed off a paneled touch-driven email app, similar
to that found in iOS. The app supports multiple accounts and multi-touch
selection of multiple messages (a feature not present in iOS). The app
supports a number of forms of messaging, including email, Twitter posting, and
more.

The OS has a clean virtual keyboard (which is resizable and creates satisfy key
"press" noises, to boot), and offers support for wireless printing
and VPN. Supported productivity apps include QuickOffice, Google
Docs, Dropbox, and Box.net compatibility.

The device offers eBook support via a built in Kindle reader app, which comes
courtesy of a new partnership with Amazon. It even supports those gaudy
page flip animations.

Like the Pre, it will sync your music collection (presumably with iTunes, to
Apple's chagrin). It offers full Flash support too, letting you watch web
video and play online games without pause.

Rounding out the tablet, it offers what looks like a terrific multi-tasking
interface. Like a tablet-digestable version of what you experience on the
computer, it breaks down items into notifications near the top of the screen,
and multiple apps you can seamlessly and quickly switch between.

HP may well have Apple or Android beat in this department. It seems to
think so... HP’s Sachin Kansal states, "Multitasking was not an afterthought,
it was a design principal from day one."
HP even took another dig at Apple and other "walled garden"
ecosystems, with Mr. Bradley stating, "We've embraced the webOS dev
community. We keep the tools in the garage -- unlocked."

So when in the TouchPad coming?

According to Mr. Rubinstein, "A WiFi version of HP's TouchPad will be
available in the summer, followed by 3G and 4G versions.

iii. Connecting the Tablet, Smartphone, Web, and Printers

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of HP’s announcement was its announcement is
how its new products communicate in so many different ways

For example the TouchPad and Pre phones would talk to each other. When
the Pre phones are dropped on the next-gen Touchstones, they relay texts and
phone calls to the TouchPad. Presumably you would use a Bluetooth headset
to take voice calls.

You can take your Pre and tap it against your TouchPad and it transfers the
website you're viewing on your tablet to the phone (incredible, we wonder if HP
has a patent on this...). HP calls this tech "Touch to Share".

Another example of this focus on connectivity can be found in the new pictures
app, which automatically Sync's with cloud storage sites, such as Facebook.
It even integrates features from those sites, say showing Facebook
comments in a in-app pane. And the pictures can be relayed to a supported
printer anywhere using HP's remote printing technology.

III. Our Take

HP clearly delivered an A-game presentation today. From appearances by
the Beats CEO who works closely with Dr. Dre, to the special featurettes with
executives TIME Magazine, Dreamworks, and others, the presentation left you
shaking you blinking your eyes confused, wondering if you had mistakenly
wandered into an Apple press event.

But one question is whether it tipped its hand too soon. Typically, Apple
showcases products that are available the next day, or at worst in a couple
weeks. The TouchPad and Pre3 won't grace store
shelves for at least another four months.

A lot of whether the TouchPad is a stud or dud is thus uncertain. Palm
unveiled great looking hardware, connectivity innovation, and impressive
software today. However, by four months from now will it seem as great?

At worst, HP seems to have three products that will be in the same ballpark, if
not technically superior.

Perhaps the biggest unknown, though, is the question of developer support.
Right now Palm doesn't exactly have an overly active developer community.
Yes, it has apps, and yes some developers still make apps for webOS.
But most developers focus on two platforms -- Android and iOS.

With Windows Phone 7 now entering that mix, one has to wonder how well Palm
will be able to convince everyone from game makers to business software makers
to devote the large time budget needed to create a custom port fully leveraging
the power of webOS.

From what we've heard webOS is a friendly enough environment to develop in,
with good tools and APIs, particularly if you're familiar with the Java-heavy
Android environment. But good tools don't exactly equate to developer
interest.

HP may be able to get by with a little bit of "if you build it, they will
come" mentality, but in the long term whether these products are mobile
heroes or zeroes over their lifespans will boil down to their app catalog.
The partners who spoke at the event is clearly a good first time, but HP
has a long road ahead of it in trying to reignite an active webOS development
community and get product to its potential customers (you).

It's always fun to root for the underdog, so until these products come up
short, we're optimistic that they'll offer a nice challenge to the
market-dominating RIM-Android-iOS trifecta.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

If you need specific apps that are only available on one platform, then it makes sense to limit yourself to just that platform.

That said, webOS really is pretty impressive from a user standpoint. I think many ipad/iphone users would stop and think twice about “how magical” their iOS devices interface is if they actually took a minute to try webOS (that is, if they could pull their collective heads out of Steve’s backside and admit that Apple isn’t omnipotent in everything it does…)

WebOS has a fair list of Apps, not iOS or Android levels by any means, but there is a lot there to work with all the same. Further, the flexibility of the OS level tweaks/hacks that they (as a company) encourage their users to develop really offers a person easy capability to setup their device the way the user wants it. Something you’ll never get on iOS, and really even Android doesn’t offer the same customization capabilities.

Finally, Palm put a lot of effort into attracting developers to their OS. They developed a number of tools specifically targeted to make porting iOS apps to WebOS as simple as possible (Most of the time it is just a couple hour effort.) They have put effort into financially incentivizing app development too, in one instance they ran two individual 1 million dollar giveaway contests for developers a year or so ago, plus they ran a promotion for a couple of weeks where all apps were half off, but devs still got paid their full royalties. It sounds like HP is going to continue to court developers just as strongly. Only now HP has real resources and long-term credibility to make devs take WebOS seriously.

So I wouldn’t count WebOS out *just* because the app tally doesn’t have as big of a number as Android or iOS right now.

"Game reviewers fought each other to write the most glowing coverage possible for the powerhouse Sony, MS systems. Reviewers flipped coins to see who would review the Nintendo Wii. The losers got stuck with the job." -- Andy Marken